Monsanto wins landmark patent case in Supreme Court

The United States Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of biotech giant Monsanto, closing the door on a patent case that has pitted a smalltime farmer from Indiana against a titan of the agriculture industry.

The high court said early Monday that 75-year-old farmer Vernon
Bowman of Indiana violated Monsanto’s patent rights when he
purchased a mix of seeds from a grain elevator that he later
planted on his Midwest farm. That mix included patented Roundup
Ready soybean seeds manufactured by Monsanto that are sold under
license because they can hold up against their namesake, a nasty
pesticide regularly used on farms.

Bowman argued that he could do whatever he wanted with the
Roundup Ready seeds since he obtained them rightfully from a grain
elevator and the terms of Monsanto’s licensing agreement under the
patent did not apply to him. Under Monsanto’s terms, Roundup Ready
seeds can only be harvested once and must not be saved or
reused.

“If they don’t want me to go to the elevator and buy that
grain, then Congress should pass a law saying you can’t do it,”
Bowman told RT in February.

"If they then claim that I can't use that, they're forcing
their patent on me," Bowman he said to Huffington Post earlier
this year. "No law was ever passed that said no farmers can't go
to the elevator and buy grain and use it, so to me they either
forced their patent on me or they abandoned their patent by
allowing it to be dumped it with non-Roundup grain."

“By planting and harvesting Monsanto’s patented seeds, Bowman
made additional copies of Monsanto’s patented invention, and his
conduct thus falls outside the protections of patent
exhaustion,” the court ruled. “Were this otherwise,
Monsanto’s patent would provide scant benefit. After Monsanto sold
its first seed, other seed companies could produce the patented
seed to compete with Monsanto, and farmers would need to buy seed
only once.”

“Under the doctrine of patent exhaustion, the authorized sale
of a patented article gives the purchaser, or any sub­sequent
owner, a right to use or resell that article. Such a sale, however,
does not allow the purchaser to make new copies of the patented
invention,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court. “The
question in this case is whether a farmer who buys patented seeds
may repro­duce them through planting and harvesting without
thepatent holder’s permission. We hold that he may not.”

Monsanto’s practices both in the courtroom and on the farm have
made the company increasingly the target of criticism in recent
months, and a series of affairs in Washington has done little to
weaken the opposition. Campaigns against the company have been
renewed as of late following the passing of a congressional agriculture spending bill
that included a provision — dubbed the “Monsanto Protection Act” by its critics — that
provides legal immunity to biotech entities that experiment with
genetically modified and genetically engineer foods. Additionally,
the relationship between Monsanto and the country’s high court has
been called into question since one of the justices, Clarence
Thomas, formerly served as a lawyer for the St. Louis-based
company.

On May 25, an international series of rallies to protest Monsanto is scheduled to occur with
demonstrations planned on six continents.